Is it just me? Perhaps I'm just old (in web years) or did the web just get WAY more complicated than it needs to be? There's msn.com, there's MSN Messenger, there's Windows Messenger, there's Office Communicator, there's Hotmail, yada yada yada.

P.S. The fact that http://www.live.com looks considerably different in my build of Firefox is really unfortunate given that everyone else seems to manage cross-browser at this point in the game.

P.P.S. Note the search on Live.com for "Hanselman" yields a #1 result for my old blog from 3 years ago. A blog I haven't updated in I don't know how long. Results #2 and #3 are for, some reason, sub-categories of my current blog.

P.P.P.S. Patrick says, "Ah, like My Yahoo. Welcome to 1996."

P.P.P.P.S. I typed in "PDX," the airport code for Portland Airport into the Weather Gadget and got Vancouver, WA. Stunning.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

To be fair www.live.com does say that Firefox support is forthcoming at the top of the page.

Dilip

Wednesday, 02 November 2005 00:44:46 UTC

http://www.acmebinary.com/blogs/kent/archive/2005/10/29/321.aspx

Take a look at it in Safari, even better...

Still, I think the purpose was best described in Dare's post at: http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=53565948-e358-4ced-b44e-2fb417136e5e where he says (trying to do this without HTML): As someone who works on MSN^H^H^H Windows Live products

In other words, little new here folks, keep playing and come back in a while for the good stuff.

Brandon: that's pure and utter bullshit. Why are you guys the only ones having trouble with other browsers? Ever check out script.aculo.us? They've got a solution that works in every major browser (that's Firefox, Safari, Opera and IE).

I think one of the big reasons that the start.com guys have such a tough time with getting stuff running in other browsers is that IE has so many non-standard DOM extensions and the like that make seperating out "standards-compliant" code from "IE-specific" code a real pain in the ass.

This is the main reason why I develop Javascript stuff in Firefox (with JS strict mode on!) then hack at it to get it working in IE. Perhaps the MSN red-vests should try that approach too. :)

So now we see Microsoft playing "catch-up" and giving us lame reasons for why they do not know how to build a solution that works on other browsers. I love the part on the spaces blog where it says that safari and opera did not support a "standard" - So are they saying that google is just that much better than they are or what?

The whole live.com thing is coming across as an amateur attempt to clone Google. The only reason it's got so much attention is that it's got the weight of the biggest software vendor behind it. If any smaller shop release the same thing, they'd be laughed off the stage.

The reason you don't get Window Live is because it's nothing more than a rebranding of the various MSN pieces into Windows brand. And I just posted in my blog the reason why I think it's going to be a failure.

The reason nobody (including me) sees it that way, is that Google made improvements to make theirs unique (well, I'm not so sure about Talk). So we don't accuse Google of copying MS.Are you assuming that Live won't add any new features (does gmail have drag and drop folder management)? Why accuse MS of copying Google, or anyone else? They are building on the sucess of their predecessors; something EVERY good software developer should do.

You just don't "get it" man. See, that's the new Microsoft message, at least as seen by Robert Scoble. If you don't immediately heap praise upon whatever new offering they have announced , be it live or the "ribbon", you just don't "get it". You're not smart enough to see the whole picture based on their brilliant marketing. You have to "wait and see", once they release something that is more obvious then your poor, addeled brain will grasp the enormity and greatness that is "live.com".

Just you wait. ;)

(P.S. I can't even use MS Virtual Earth or Mappoint to find a burger joint in Redmond consistantly and you expect MS to know that Vancouver is across the bridge in a whole other state! Talk about setting your expectations high!)

Scott,From a technical stand point, I must agree with you, Windows Live is nothing new under the sun. However, IMHO Windows Live is a major change in Microsoft business model. It is the recognition by Microsoft that it makes a lot of sense to sell software using advertising-supported model. This is the repetitive theme that kept jumping out at me when reading the press release was "advertising".

"Windows Live will primarily be delivered free to users and supported by advertising,"

It does not mean that Microsoft will stop selling Windows and Office the way it is today. I just mean that Microsoft want to get a major share of the WEB 2.0 market leads actually by Google. Microsoft must ensure that the revving web promoting on the client side the browser as THE platform will not run on something else than Windows OS. Just like Microsoft did for WEB 1.0 against Netscape, you should expect Microsoft to embrace and extent WEB 2.0 platform in a way that will ensure Windows OS to survive on the PC. And this is why, even if it is only a web portal, this free service has WINDOWS in its name. It will all start as an AJAX only web portal but expect XAML and WPF to follow in a near future.

Here is my post entry about Windows Live http://dotnet-expertise.com/cs/blogs/mario_cardinal/archive/2005/11/05/180.aspx